


Gentle Pushes; Soft Words

by Because_Of_Xaela



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Boys In Love, Cute, Established Relationship, Henry Laurens' A+ Parenting, If it's not obvious, M/M, Mentions of a Sexual Relationship, Read the note, Scars, Story within a Story, graphic depictions of walmart, lots of stories, they live together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 08:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19169542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Because_Of_Xaela/pseuds/Because_Of_Xaela
Summary: Alex has a scar he won't tell John about. Until John tells Alex the stories of his.





	Gentle Pushes; Soft Words

**Author's Note:**

> The Graphic Depiction of Violence tag is just a precaution; there is no actual description of violence in this fic, but there are graphic-ish descriptions of scars, and a few mentions of blood and violence. Trust me, it's not that bad. Just emotional.

It had started out innocently enough. Cup of tea, cup of coffee, Netflix started up, "The Jungle Book" playing (“You want to watch the new one without ever seeing the original?” “I grew up in a place with no television, John, I haven’t seen the ‘original version’ of most things...No. Shut up and play it.”), Alex curled into his side with his head on John’s chest. Humming softly whenever John would shift his weight. One particular shift had him pulling Alex towards him further, tugging his torso to his chest, and, now that John was done with his tea, combing his fingers through his dark hair. Slow, calculated, like the hundreds of times he had done before, just the way Alex liked. He felt him relax in his lap and follow the movement of his hand. John, unable to help himself, leaned down and kissed the top of his boyfriend’s head, relishing for a moment the scent that his shampoo left behind.

It was when he pulled away, however, that his eye caught a glimpse of the shiny, scarred-over skin on Alex’s right elbow, glistening for a moment in the light of the T.V. It was a jagged thing, a long, etched-out wound starting an inch thick at the top of his elbow, and ending halfway up his bicep, thinning out and curling at the end, a decided point. It’s not as if John had not seen it before, their frequent love-making was cause for every part of Alexander to be disclosed to him, but he had never asked about it. Alex had definitely noticed John’s eyes roaming over the scar every so often, a question sparkling in those brown eyes and on his tongue, but never leaving his lips. John, paying conscious attention to it, now realized the question was still stuck there in the back of his throat, waiting to be posed. Waiting not for an answer, but a story.

It had been a year of ups and downs for them. A year of discovering each other and themselves, learning how to not only look but to see, to not only hear but to listen, to not only touch but to feel. And every new thing one learned about the other opened a door to a whole unknown world, led to a whole other level, doubling the depth they already knew existed. But sometimes delving that deep caused them both pain; too much take, not enough give, vice versa. John knew there were times both he and Alex pushed each other too far, shoves instead of gentle pushes, soft words. And after all that, the heartache and the uncovering of memories and emotions that had long been shrouded in darkness, there was an understanding John didn't want to compromise. And he didn’t have to know, but God, did he want to.

Gentle pushes. Soft words.

John’s hand met Alex’s elbow the moment Shere Khan met Mowgli. Didn’t pull away, didn't move. Breath hitched, body stiffened, eyes widened. Still, John didn't move. Kept his hand there, gentle, as if there wasn't a scar below, just a casual touch. Alex loosened in increments and settled back into John as the movie continued to play. It was a few minutes before John’s hand began to move again.

Oh boy, Alex was panicking. _He's touching it he's touching it oh God I don’t want to talk about it not on movie night please leave it alone please John please stop touching it—don’t start a conversation_ …

There was no possible way either of them could have still paid attention after John’s nail leisurely stroked the outline of the scar. The tension grew thicker as the air grew thinner, and Alex considered shaking him off and telling him to stop, but then John’s lips were on the back of his head, nose in his hair, breathing him in and sighing, and Alex promptly forgot what he was going to say. The touch was too gentle, too endearing, too loving to jerk away. When John finally spoke up, he shivered not quite unpleasantly at the sound close to his ear.

“Alexander?”

“Mm?” Alex hummed, partially to avoid what came next, partially because of the lips on his neck. But Alex’s body betrayed him, was stiff, was anticipating the next inevitable question much the way he would anticipate a punch to the gut. His neck was still turned, staring in the direction of the T.V., but not looking at anything except the space between atoms. Space between atoms, empty space, safe space…

There were a few long seconds of silence that blurred together both far too quickly and far too long. When John inhaled, Alex did too, much quicker. Excuses and mutters of half-assed, vague explanations were already being prompted in his head. John spoke,

“Did I ever tell you about Micah Abutbul’s bar mitzvah in the eighth grade?”

 _Well, no_. Alex said as much.

“...No.”

John smiled against him. “Really? I thought I would have by now.” Alex waited patiently for him to continue, not knowing quite where this had come from or quite where it was going, but welcoming the diversion of the topic nonetheless. “Yeah, Micah Abutbul. He was this skinny ginger kid who—”

“—Hey! Nothing wrong with skinny ginger kids,” Alex interrupted, smiling in spite of himself, remembering his own freckled complexion and copperish hair he had as a child.

“Never said there was! Just giving you the details.”

“Mmhmm.”

“Shush. Anyways, I don’t even really remember why I was friends with him,” John quickly hurried to finish when he heard another protesting sound from Alex’s throat, “—no! Not ‘cause he was a ginger, geez Alex, but I just honestly don’t remember. Maybe we were partners in English, maybe it was history...never mind. Anyway, it must have been mid-spring, towards the end of the school year, and it was after the ceremony and stuff, and we were on the dance floor—remember, the “cool thing” to do back then was gather with some friends at like, a corner of the dance floor and just...bob your head along to the music or whatever,”  
“‘Cool kids…’” Alex mocked under his breath, reaching to pause the movie.

“The coolest. Anyway, it was me and a couple guys, doing just that, and minding our own business, when Micah's mom—my God, she was strong—Micah's mom came, literally grabbed us by our sleeves, and yanked us out onto the dance floor, y’know, ‘cause mom’s gotta be the life of the party, I guess, and it was all well and good, until she pulled too hard and my shirt ripped, but not before she had spun me around—I’m telling you Alex, this woman was strong—stop laughing!—she spun me around and practically threw me into the middle. I was so embarrassed—eighth-grade, pimply John Laurens in a dress shirt with only one sleeve, standing there in the middle of a dance floor that I didn’t know how to dance on—that I didn’t know what to do, so I just tried to wiggle my way out of there, but there were so many people in such a small space...oh God. I’ll spare you the details, but I’ll tell you, when I finally made it out, it was with a bloody knee scraped down to the muscle and a sprained wrist.”

Alex, who had only been politely giggling before, was now laughing loudly, a whole-body thing, the vision in his head of teenaged-John like that perfectly detailed and vivid. John, who had the biggest, dumbest grin, was now hiding his bright-red face in his neck and groaning in mocking annoyance. “I feel like I’m going to regret telling you this…”

“Probably,” Alex said through hiccups of laughter. “At least you made it out alive. Okay, so, what then?”

“What?”

“Well, that’s not the end of the story is it? Did you ever get your sleeve back? Hospital trip? Stitches? What did your dad do?”

“Umm.” John was resting his chin on Alex’s shoulder now, hands like a belt around Alex’s waist. Alex held his hands and turned to face him as best as he could from the awkward angle.

“John?”

“I—uh...I lied.”

“To me, just now? Or to your dad, then?”

A little chuckle. “My dad. Then. I, uh, I told him that I fell down the stairs on the way out of the temple.” 

This inspired a new round of laughter from Alexander.

“Wait! He just...believed you? How does one manage to rip their sleeve entirely off just by falling down the stairs?”

“Hey, I told you I lied, not that he believed me.” John pouted, and it was so thoroughly cute, watching his face scrunch up and the freckles dance on his skin, that Alex craned his neck further and planted a wet kiss on his cheek. John’s face lit up once again in a smile. His plan was working. “Anyway, no, I never got my sleeve back. I wonder if Ms. Abutbul still has it to this day. And yes, I had to go to the hospital and get stitches. That’s where the, uh,” John refrained from saying the word ‘nasty’, “scar on my knee came from.”

A pause. A long, drawn out, pause. Silence so quiet it felt like it would blow Alex’s eardrums out. He knew where this was going, no, where it had gone. He realized he had walked right into John’s trap. But, Alex had to admit, he wasn’t really angry. He was only tripping over his own hesitance and nerves, but looking back, it had been long enough. They’d had enough fights over the details of their pasts, and it was commendable how gentle John had been approaching the subject. He couldn’t help but grin a little and give a soft sigh.

John noticed and had to squeeze Alex’s hand to physically keep himself from fist-pumping. Alex squeezed back, then:

“Can I see?” He asked quietly. John’s eyes widened before he scrambled to shift Alex in his lap enough to be able to yank up his pant leg. As promised, a roughly circular scar, an inch and a half in diameter, was artfully placed on John’s left knee, darker in the middle and white around the edges, as if it had been artificially grafted on. Alex paused, just staring at it for a few moments, before reaching out and gently outlining it with his finger. John’s breath hitched as the contact was made, and his gaze was dutifully locked onto Alex’s face, watching his distracted, curious eyes and parted lips. 

“Alex?”

“Hmm?”

“How did…” John was about to ask, but the tenseness returned in his boyfriend’s shoulders, and he immediately shifted course. Gentle pushes, soft words. “Do you know the story behind the one on my ankle?” Alex, still with his fingers tracing John’s knee scar, laughed a little under his breath, fully recognizing the game, and fully willing to play. Besides, he was aching to hear another embarrassing story. 

“In fact, I do not.”

“Oh, it’s a doozy. Okay: fire burn.”

“A burn? That’s it? That’s the least doozy-est thing possible. In what way is that interesting—”

“Trust me, there’s a really big ‘John was an idiot as a kid’ story behind this one.”

“‘As a kid?’” Alex emphasized his point with air quotation marks and gave a little squeal when John shoved his head to the side.

“Rude,” John retaliated. The smile on Alex’s face lit up the dim room. John smiled in turn.

“So, like, I was probably sixteen...maybe fifteen, no, Mary was two, so I was sixteen. I was, um, I guess a bit of a pyro back then? It’s not like it was one of those psychological, uncontrollable urges, and wasn’t an arsonist, I promise, but I liked to light matches and help my dad start the fireplace and just watch it for a while, stuff like that. And I don’t know what it was, but one day, I was just really stressed out with homework and school and my dad was being especially tough on me about sports, and just everything, I think. I don’t remember all the details, but I was really just angry, so I decided to take out all my old assignments from my backpack and burn them in the firepit outside. I wasn’t, like, storming around with some crazy images of destruction in my head, I was just really sick of them; I knew how to start a safe fire, Alex, I swear!”

Alex had playfully widened his eyes and started to scoot away from him in mock-fear. John reached out and pulled him back.

“Anyway,” John started with emphasis, “I had all the papers and the logs in there, and I struck the match, but I struck it too close to my fingers, and it made me flinch and drop it.”

“Oh God…”

“Well, thank that God that the grass was still wet, but my shoe was another story. They were really nice shoes; they never got to live a full life. Rest in peace.” John made a cross sign on his chest to a sputtering Alex.

“Uh, no, enough with the not finishing the story shit. Tell me what happened after.” Alex demanded. John became sheepish once again, but continued to laugh through his words, clearly enjoying his reactions.

“Umm, my shoe caught on fire. And I screamed. Loud. My dad wasn’t home, but Henry came out with the fire extinguisher. Promised not to tell him if I gave him my allowance money for the month.”

“Ah, I always thought your brother would make a fine businessman.”

“You’ve met him, like, twice.”

“He seems like the type.”

“Mhmm, well anyway, fire got one part of my ankle pretty bad. It hurt to wear socks for a week and a half,” John said as Alex trailed his fingers down John’s calf to the scar in question. John let him.

Alex had looked at it before, but never really took the time to see it; it was small, about the size of a dime, raised and lighter than the rest of his skin. Alex closed his eyes as he gently touched it, finding that he could perfectly imagine the situation: John’s shoe blazing on his foot while he tried to kick it off, screaming for one of his siblings, for anyone. Maybe it was funny in hindsight, but he must have been really afraid.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to make fun of you for something like that. Must’ve been really scary,” Alex said, his voice low. John noticed the shift and was confused about the sincerity. He rushed to reassure him.

“Alex, it’s fine, I’m not traumatized or anything, I was just a kid. A stupid kid.”

Suddenly, Alex’s face was a breath away from John’s, his hand on his cheek and staring straight into his eyes. “You were never stupid. You aren’t.” 

John, in an instant, recalled all the memories of the times his father had said such words to him, drunk or tipsy or sober, grieving for his wife or not. The next instant, Alex’s mouth was on his, closed-lipped and firm, and the memories left him swiftly. He felt a thousand pounds lighter by the time Alex pulled back and rested his forehead on John’s shoulder. “Love you too,” John said into his neck. Alex gave the breath of a laugh.

“I’ve got one.”

“Yeah?” John sat up a little straighter, almost bracing for the story that was no doubt going to flood them both with emotions both sorrowful and loving, but stopped short when Alexander turned away from him, sitting with his back to John’s chest, and pulling up his hair to expose his neck.

“This is one you’ve probably never seen before—I know, right? What part of me haven’t you seen? Well, yeah, put your hands there, it’s somewhere...there. Right there. Put your finger right on top of mine, uh, maybe you need a light to see it, it’s pretty tiny, but...there.” Alex stopped his rambling when John’s finger pressed against a tiny lump on the back of Alex’s head. Nope, he definitely had not seen this one before.

“I—uh—how’d you get it?”

“Dirty needle.”

“What?”

“Relax, hun, I was never a drug addict, but, a lot of people back on the island were. Heroin hit the place really hard in the...1970s...I think? Yeah, a lot of people around me were really struggling with it, and our infrastructure didn’t help any. But, lots of heroin users means lots of dirty heroin needles on the street. I dropped my—ahem— _legally acquired_ books on the way home from work one day, knelt down to pick them up, slipped, and my head managed to fall on top of one of the little demons.”

“Oh my God, Alex—”

“It’s fine! Nothing bad happened from it, a little infection, but I also _legally acquired_ some antibiotics and took them and it was fine. I was really lucky I didn’t get anything from it. I guess there were hundreds of ways my time could have come on that godforsaken island, but I just couldn’t seem to die.”

John’s hand was lazily stroking through his boyfriend’s hair at this point. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, some of us just get dealt a bad hand.”

“I’m sorry,” John repeated.

“It’s okay.”

“I’ve got a little one on my pointer finger!” John said enthusiastically, changing the topic and oddly excited how this conversation was going. John wanted this to last. And...maybe they’d get to the one on Alex’s arm later...maybe not. It didn’t much matter at this point.

“Oh yeah, I’ve seen that one, didn’t you cut it in a toy store or something?” Alex said, giggling.

“No, how dare you not remember every minute detail of the vague stories I’ve previously told you! No, it was the toy section of a _Walmart_ , thank you very much.”

“ _Sorrrrrrry_ ,” Alex drawled.

“‘John did a lot of stupid stuff’ seems to be a recurring theme in these stories, but I guess this one turned out pretty okay. The stupid thing was wearing a blue collared shirt to Walmart. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It was my little sister’s birthday the next day, and she really liked dolls back then, so I was just trying to find something simple in the toy aisle, as a big brother should, but because of my poor fashion choice that day, this short Hispanic woman with three kids thought I worked there and started asking me about the dolls,” John paused there.

“And? How’d you get the cut?” Alex inquired. 

Instead of answering the question, John supplied, “It was the first time I had heard someone speaking Spanish since my mother died.” A pregnant pause filled the room.

“Oh.”

“I helped her pick out something for her littlest girl. I even remember—it was a Barbie with a red dress and pink shoes—she told me her name and all of her kids’ names and how much they loved school and what both her sons wanted to be when they grew up and how the doll was a reward for her daughter’s good grades. I had a full-blown conversation with her. In Spanish. I don’t remember the names of the kids, but I think the mother’s name was Mariana.” John shook his head as if trying to clear words from it. “The cut was just on the sharp corner of a doll box, it’s dumb, it’s only a scar now because I picked at it, but looking at it reminds me of Mariana...and my mom, I guess. And maybe the memory is distorted, but she looked so much like her.”

“I’ve seen the pictures. You look like your mother. You’re both so beautiful. You have her hair, John,” Alex said while reaching up to play with the strands. “and way too many of her freckles,” he added as an afterthought.

“Hey, you love my freckles.”

“That I do.”

“She really was beautiful.”

“That she was.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The next however many minutes were spent like that, trading stories back and forth. John had a scar on the inside of his knee from when he left his sketching pencil in bed. Alex had an indent on his wrist from a dog bite; he remembered it as the day he won the scholarship that changed his life. John had a nail mark on his own wrist. His little sister had clung to it once when John’s father was drunk and particularly angry. Alex revealed a line on his back from when he got jumped in an alleyway. John finally understood why he was especially nervous around knives. It went on. Eventually, scars turned to moles, birthmarks, stretch marks, and freckles. Eventually, nothing physical was needed to prompt the stories. Eventually, stories turned into singular words, which turned to kisses and hums and soft breaths. Eventually, it turned to silence.

There are moments where silence is heavy. Where it lays across your shoulders like dead weight and gets heavier the longer it carries on. Sometimes silences are filled with fear of the future. There are silences that drag on too long and silences that are cut too short. There are silences where the world collapses in around you and you feel like you’re falling, falling, into absolutely nothing, and it feels like the silence is chasing you further into yourself until you’re just a broken shell and nothing around you is recognisable. There are silences that make you feel less than human. There are silences that destroy.

But there are always silences filled with peace. An overwhelming, all-consuming sense of peace. A peace that seems to last forever.

Until the storm comes.

“Alexander?”

Lightning.

“Yes, John?”

Thunder.

“I need to ask you something.”

Pounding rain. Howling wind.

“You’ve asked me a lot of things.”

The sun disappears. The animals scurry.

“That scar on your arm,” John whispered.

Thunder, thunder, lightning, rain, wind that knocks you down and fear that holds your face in the dirt. Lightning, lightning, _lightning_ , rain thick and warm like blood, in your eyes, in your ears, drenching your clothes and the sound and smell of metal tearing apart. Limbs tearing apart. The floods, rushing, rushing in, screams of children whose parents have left them. Slow runners. Too slow. Bells are rung in the distance until the thunder drowns them out too. Alone. So, so alone, afraid, covered in rain like blood and debris, flying through the air, it’s going to fall, it’s going to fall, until it doesn’t and the winds of hell pick it back up to soar through the air to frighten another child. Trees are sideways. Thunder, Lightning. Rain is sideways. Blood rain. There is blood from noses, blood from scraped feet. Running, running, as quickly as possible to nowhere that exists on bloody feet, stones between toes, the grass is soft. The mud is soft. Debris, debris, a body that floats by, and suddenly the waters pick up your feet and the salt burns the gashes. Lightning. The water is red, red, it’s so red that this must be hell. This is hell, this is hell, your friends are dead, everyone is dead, your brother, your mother, the water is freezing hot against your feet and burns like ice on your face, the water must be tears. Tears that carry debris closer, closer, closer, closer. Pain. Pain. _Pain_. Pain like hell. Back to a wall, thankful for the wall, the world goes dark and a word travels like lightning though your head. 

_Hurricane_.

“How did you get it?”

You wake up to peace.

Alexander opened his eyes and found John’s. John. Sincere, loving, selfless, kind John. John who lost his mother and was pushed away from his father and grew up alone and pretending. John with his millions of freckles like stars in the sky and the way Alexander’s urge to kiss all of them never dimmed. John, who had consistently put Alex before himself and would do anything for him, never paying any mind to the consequences. John Laurens. His John. Looking into those eyes, Alex figured that if the world fell away and all that was left was this couch and them staring into each other’s eyes, maybe they’d be okay. But this...thing...between them, this stale, rotting, sharp piece of debris, much like what gave Alex his scar in the first place, was suffocating. 

It was the last straw. It was Alex’s last barrier that at one point in his life, he thought he would defend to the death and never let anyone come near. But as John once again ghosted his fingers around the edge of the mark, Alex realized he was already close. He felt the weight on his bones heavier than ever and the breath he’d been holding in for years and the gallons of tears he wouldn’t let spill behind his eyes, and he was exhausted. And God, if there was one person in existence that he could trust to help hold his broken and fragile past, it was the man before him. So with a shaky breath and a muttered “To hell with it,” Alex collapsed into John’s chest in a frenzy of grief and agony and suffering and let the hurricane’s flood flow.

“ _Let me tell you_.”

**Author's Note:**

> hahahahaaaHAHAHAH I haven't written anything in over a year I'm so sorry  
> I was just going through my drive and I found this in there from a year ago. I thought I had posted it then but I thought fucking wrong  
> fixed it up for yas and now it's here yaaaaay  
> I like to think you guys waited for me :)  
> comments and kudos are my heroin  
> I saw the OBC of Hadestown on Broadway


End file.
